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Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio)

A command line view of IT



Twitter visibility improves with Blue Coat

By Sean Michael Kerner on August 4, 2009 9:08 AM
blue.coat.jpg
From the 'yeaaah companies use Twitter' files:

Twitter is not just something people use at home, it's being used by business and that's why enterprise IT needs to know about Twitter - from a network traffic perspective.

Network optimization vendor Blue Coat (Nasdaq:BCSI), now has the ability to detect Twitter traffic with its PacketShaper WAN optimization appliances. That means that instead of enterprises just using Twitter without any degree of optimization or control, an IT manager can actually identify and manage Twitter traffic from a network level.

That's a big deal. It means that Twitter goes from the realm of just being something that runs on Port 80 - to being an identified application that has enterprise policy and control attached to it.

Twitter now joins other enterprise applications that Blue Coat can identify including Microsoft Outlook and Oracle database.
"Understanding which social media tools are being utilized and how employees are using them is valuable information that helps network administrators set and enforce corporate policies," said Steve House, Director of Product Marketing at Blue Coat Systems in a statement.

One thing that Blue Coat (as far as I can tell) isn't doing with Twitter is accelerating it. The PacketShaper line up is all about visibility and control, while Blue Coat's ProxySG appliances also do acceleration. Then again, if you can shape the traffic and give it priority, that become in effect a form of 'acceleration.'

I personally have not seen prior to today any other enterprise network optimization vendors specifically call out Twitter as something they can identify and manage. I don't doubt that after today, I'll here from plenty more that are now doing the same thing.

Blue Coat was recently itself identified by IDC as the global leader for the first quarter of 2009 in the WAN application delivery market.

All traffic should be identified and classified in order to ensure network policy compliance. It makes sense that Twitter has now reached a stage of maturity where IT manager need greater visibility into its affect on networks.

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1 Comments

Sean Brett said:

Opteq, whom i work for have been doing this for years - so have Allot dare I say and most other vendors that I know of that can do layer 7 analysis.
Twitter is not a protocol, but a website. You can use the URL filter in Bandwidth iQ to match any twitter requests and manage them appropriately.

August 21, 2009 5:59 AM

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